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Pirates disembark on Treasure Island and try to find as much gold as possible. Each player controls 3 sailors, who can move around the island, carry found treasures, fight enemies, and find adventures. If you're someone who likes digging for buried treasure, fighting pirates, meeting crocodiles, looking down the barrel of a cannon, and dragging gold back to your ship, then shiver me timbers, this just might be the board game for you!

Welcome to a nearly uninhabited island where the Jackal, an infamous old pirate, buried his treasure. It is now your task to first explore the island, find every last gold coin and haul it all back to your ship – or else be overtaken by a competing gang of freebooters. The game board is a large map of Treasure Island, made up of “land” tiles initially placed face down in a random order. This means that the island will be unique and completely different every time you play. When a pirate enters an unknown area, they turn over the tile and explore it.

You control three pirates who can move across the island, explore, haul treasure, do battle with other pirates, or perform special actions such as meeting natives, garrisoning a fort, or even taking flight in a hot-air balloon. To win the game, you must not only find the Jackal's buried treasure, but you must also successfully drag it back to your ship. One of the most interesting strategies in the game lies in intercepting an opponent's pirates while they are carrying gold, or cunningly poaching piles of coins while they are poorly guarded.

The element of chance involved in Jackal is minimal, and your success in
the game will largely be determined by your tactical ability.

We have sunk two galleons to capture the best artists for the design of this game.

Shuffle the terrain tiles face down and create the island.

Choose a place to drop anchor and send your sailors ashore to start exploring.

There is an adventure under each and every tile!

When you find some treasure, you must start hauling it to your ship, while your opponents try to keep you from making off with it.

This game is full of possibilities. And most importantly - the adventure does not end with one game. Your pirates learn and acquire new skills. The next game you play Archipelago, you can explore a whole new island with the very same crew of salty scoundrels that you had assembled on your previous voyage.

New game actions that make Jackal a fast-paced swashbuckling pirate skirmish - a battle of wits that starts with your very first move, and whose outcome wholly depends on your tactical prowess.

A gentle learning curve, featuring a gradual increase in difficulty (casual to hardcore) from island to island.

A role-based system, where each pirate has unique abilities.

Archipelago is an exciting new adventure, as well as a new edition of a beloved bestseller. Because the game board is randomly created each time, the game offers an almost infinite variety of play. No matter how many times you play any given adventure with your friends, it will never be the same experience twice. 2–4 players, 6 years & up, 30–60 minutes.

You may play Jackal Archipelago as an adventure exploring the islands or mix all the tiles together and play as one big game with a different game board each time and endless replay value.

Inside the big box, you will find the coins, rules, bottles, tactical
puzzle cards, a 6-sided die, 4 boat game pieces, 12 pirate figures, the
bear, and the missionary. Each individual island’s terrain tiles is
contained in a separate small box, as are the pirate ability cards.

This is what you’ll see if you unpack all the boxes.

66 square terrain tiles: These will make up your treasure island, or rather, several different treasure islands, each packaged in its own individual box.

4 pirate crew (red, yellow, black and white) each containing 3 pirate figures: These are your brave sailors, who will explore the island and have all kinds of adventures. They are represented on the board by well-painted hardwood pirates silhouettes.

Missionary piece: A pacifist missionary. Game expansions also introduce other interesting characters, such as the native.

Bear piece: A terrifying enraged beast who hunts your pirates.

This is why the game pieces are shaped as they are.

4 square boat tiles: While other tiles have terrain types on one side and adventures on the other, these tiles each have a boat in one of the crew's colors on both sides. This is how your pirates get to the island. There are also advanced rules that will allow you to board enemy boats. Like all the other tiles, these are made from thick laminated cardboard, the kind that makes a nice satisfying sound when you drop it.

19 coins: Gold-colored plastic coins with fine detail. This is the primary target of your pirates’ ambitions on the island: treasure! The coins from the demo sets in our stores keep being “borrowed” because people just love them!

12 ability cards: Special pirate skills that allow you to develop your own strategy. One of these cards is what distinguishes a seasoned sea dog from a normal landlubber.

5 messages in bottles: Called “bottle of rum” in previous editions, these little plastic pieces allow a pirate to instantly leap out of a pit trap, and various other brave and foolish things. Direct references to alcohol in games that kids are likely to play are frowned upon in a number of countries, so now they’re messages in bottles.

Pirate ability stickers: Earned, not merely given, these distinguish your experienced pirates from the rest of the rabble in the game box.

10 puzzle cards for the single-player variant: Even if you find yourself stranded alone on a desert island, this game still has something to offer you.

6-sided die: Not really necessary for the basic game, but you can use to decide who goes first, and it is also used for some pirate abilities.

Skull-shaped “jolly roger” box (fish-shaped if you turn it over), made from heavy-duty cardboard, with separators on the inside. This box contains 4 smaller boxes, which keep your island tiles (an island in each box) organized and ready for quick set-up.

Rulebook: Game rules with examples, illustrations, tactical suggestions, and other nice and useful things.

You can also try Jackal Archipelago on Tabletopia right now. Tabletopia is a digital platform for board games that allow you to play with your far away friends.

Please notice that you'll need to add $5 for European delivery and $10 for international. USA, Canada, Russia shipping is free.

Created in the 1970's by math and nuclear physics professors at Moscow State University (more or less Russia's MIT), one of the most prestigious universities in Russia.

In 2008, we published the first commercial edition – big, expensive, and featuring detailed metal figurines.

In 2010, we put out a simplified and significantly more affordable version with wooden figurines and a cardboard box.

In 2012, a 9-year-old girl qualified for the final of an official Jackal tournament for the first time. We got a sea of feedback from parents about how fun it is to play the game with children 6 & up.

Jackal was the best-selling strategy game in Russia in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

In 2015, we sold 40,000 boxes (including expansions).

In 2016, armed with years of experience and tons of player feedback, we have created a new edition – Archipelago, consisting of small self-contained adventure quests.

Jackal (its previous versions) has now been on the market for 8 years in Russia, and it has sold more than 150,000 sets. Yarrrr, now that's what I call success, matey!

This is what it’ll look like on store shelves: the main edition of
Jackal to the right, the “skull” Archipelago box in the center (this is
the prototype: the game that we’ll ship will be 3 cm shorter, as to
better fit store shelves around the world), surrounded on all sides by
several famous games.

Mosigra is the largest specialist retail chain for tabletop board games in Russia, as well as the biggest Russian internet board game retailer since 2007. The company has 80 stores in 42 cities. In the near future, Mosigra plans to open a chain of stores in Europe and the US.

The company also runs large-scale game events that serve around a million people every year - we do our best to promote this excellent hobby.

Mosigra has a subsidiary board game publishing business: Magellan, which has created and co-published many popular board games in Russia.

Help us launch Archipelago globally!

Risks and challenges

We should not experience difficulty in production or printing as we have lots of experience in the board game industry. Last year we also made our first Kickstarter project that was delivered to our backers and got amazing feedback.
We have already made Jackal Archipelago. It was test run of 300 boxes for the International Games Event Essen SPIEL where all examples were sold.
We are slightly worry about international shipping of figurative boxes. But most probably all of them will be packed into one more square rigid box in which they will be transported.
Jackal Archipelago is in the final stage of the box design and is ready for its first Kickstarter print run.